First roll of Ilford's XP2 Super (photo samples)

[SolaresLarrave]

I hadn't used it much because of accessibility (in my neck of the woods, Ilford is just exotic), but this is the best C-41 B&W film there is. As other Ilford products, it renders beautifully contrasty prints.

 

[nico]

Rich,
you conviced me to try that ilford, your shots are really great, thanks for sharing.
bye
nico

 

[Rich Silfver]

Rich, fantastic pictures as always!

but i'm wondering about any toning on your uploads? they have your "look" to them which leads me to believe that they had some sort of toning done.

also, were these scans of actual prints of of the negatives? i'm guessing negs.
- chris

Chris, I always tend to add a duo-tone to my scans to 'warm' them up a bit. These scans have a similar duo-tone applied as well. The original scans looked - as far as 'tone' goes - pretty much like any other b&w negative.

The scans were of the negatives (Epson 3200 flatbed scanner).

 

[Rich Silfver]

Yes, with the right work on contrast, XP2 can really do well. I find it super flat as straight scans, and I need a harsher curve to get it right. But once I do that, it's great.

One thing, and this is not just for Rich...my laptop is 1024x768. Your image is 640 wide. With the all the stuff on the left, I have to scroll. Can folks use slightly smaller images so those of us stuck on XGA on smaller laptops don't have to scroll?

Rich, I hope you know that I like your work very much. I presume that's BART. I love stairwells and escalators.

allan

Allan, it's the station in the Castro.

 

[Rich Silfver]

Okay, guys, based on Rich's results and the other positive comments, I bought a roll of IP2 Super and gave it a try yesterday afternoon. Was surprised with the results in that they all came out a bit dark and too contrasty for my tastes. And lightening the scanned images then brought the grain up. Maybe it was just the Walgreen's processing but they've done me right with the Kodak BW400CN in the past. Not sure what to make of my experience except to say that it's made me gunshy of using this film. Anybody have any thoughts on what may be causing the difference versus Rich's nice results?

Thanks,
Randy

Randy, sorry to hear about your results. The prints and negatives are pretty dark/contrasty (something I personally kind of like) - but the scans are fairly easy to adjust as the grain is very fine and there is a lot of details in the negatives.

Did you scan yourself or Walgreen's - and do you got a sample image to post (maybe a larger one as an attachment)?

 

[kaiyen]

Rich,
Can you elaborate a bit on your "adding a duo-tone" method? Perhaps I"m just not familiar with the terminology (I know duo-tones for printing...).

allan

 

[vrgard]

Randy, sorry to hear about your results. The prints and negatives are pretty dark/contrasty (something I personally kind of like) - but the scans are fairly easy to adjust as the grain is very fine and there is a lot of details in the negatives.

Did you scan yourself or Walgreen's - and do you got a sample image to post (maybe a larger one as an attachment)?

Hi Rich. Yeah, these are just the Walgreen's scans. Haven't taken the time to scan them myself yet. Here's one example of the extreme contrast I was referring to. Just a couple of kids getting ready to dive into a couple of pumpkin pies in a pie eating contest at the local Fall Festival. And here's another example with the 'proud' parents watching their kids bury their faces in the pies.

 

[back alley]

rate it at 200 or 250 and have it processed normally.

 

[kaiyen]

Randy,
If lightening them produces grain, then you're underexposing. As Joe says, you should actually rate it down at like 250 or so. I can get away with 320 if I'm feeling risky, but it's not really a 400 speed film.

As for your scans, I'm willing to bet it's the Walgreen's. The Kodak stuff has a different base than the Ilford stuff, so the scanner might not be able to accommodate that.

allan

 

[vrgard]

Thanks Joe & Allan. Interesting that it doesn't operate as a 400 asa film. I know I was faithfully following the meter reading in my M6 which has never let me down. Perhaps I should try another run of this film at the suggested 250 or so.

And yeah, I'm sure I could get better results scanning the film myself. Just got used to getting decent results from Walgreens so was surprised. Particularly since Rich also used Walgreen's scans although it might be a different machine since it was a different Walgreen's store.

Again, thanks guys.

-Randy

 

[kaiyen]

Randy,
Don't forget - with labs, it's about the operator, not the equipment (for the most part). Perhaps the Kodak stock, with the orange mask, requires less fiddling to get the results needed. But the Ilford requires that the operator make a change.

allan

 

[vrgard]

Excellent point Allan. And this particular operator, although very friendly, clearly knew very little about film or processing. I mentioned something about another roll being 1600asa and he did not know what I was talking about.

 

[Rich Silfver]

Rich,
Can you elaborate a bit on your "adding a duo-tone" method? Perhaps I"m just not familiar with the terminology (I know duo-tones for printing...).

allan

Allen, in photoshop you can add a 'tone' to your b&w images made up of a number of colours (up to four).
You can mix up your own tones (and save them for future use) and apply the finished 'mix' to your image. Then you convert back to RGB and you have a toned jpg file.

 

[Rich Silfver]

Hi Rich. Yeah, these are just the Walgreen's scans. Haven't taken the time to scan them myself yet. Here's one example of the extreme contrast I was referring to. Just a couple of kids getting ready to dive into a couple of pumpkin pies in a pie eating contest at the local Fall Festival. And here's another example with the 'proud' parents watching their kids bury their faces in the pies.

The first one looks good and I think it could be 'tweaked' to your liking in most post processing tools (actually that one looks like many of the negatives I had on my test roll and has a contrast/tone to them that I rather like).

The second one looks pretty blown out and it could had been the metering that got tricked in that scene. I would absolutely recommend scanning the negatives yourself instead to see what details are on them.

My test roll was shot and processed at ISO 400 but I can probably agree with that that's a pretty high rating for this film.

And yeah, I'm sure I could get better results scanning the film myself. Just got used to getting decent results from Walgreens so was surprised. Particularly since Rich also used Walgreen's scans although it might be a different machine since it was a different Walgreen's store.

Actually the XP2 Super negatives I scanned myself on my Epson 3200 scanner. Didn't have a free CD-coupon with me at the time

 

[kaiyen]

Allen, in photoshop you can add a 'tone' to your b&w images made up of a number of colours (up to four).
You can mix up your own tones (and save them for future use) and apply the finished 'mix' to your image. Then you convert back to RGB and you have a toned jpg file.

Rich,
I did not know this. Thanks - more to play with once I'm home from this conference (yes, I am reading RFF in a conference session).

allan

 

[raid]

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4797174

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4985359

This is a photo taken with XP2 Super.


Raid

 

[mfunnell]

Having just come back to trying to use film (and having just started trying to use a rangefinder) I've been experimenting with different film types and trying to come to grips with using film in this oh-so-digital age. Last Saturday, I decided to experiment with various C-41 film types - trying Ilford XP2, Kodak BW400CN and also Kodak Gold 200 and Max 400 consumer colour films (from which I did BW conversions from lab-supplied scans).

The results from the colour negative film wasn't too surprising as I'd tried that before (and included them only as a "baseline" for comparison with the C-41 BW films). All were processed by the same lab and same operator using the same Fujifilm mini-lab equipment, one after the other.

The 6x4 prints I got from both BW films look great. But I did notice a big difference when I looked at the scans. Scans from the Ilford XP2 seemed to my eye to have a really harsh grain - far worse looking, to me, than my conversions from BW colour negative film. The scans from the Kodak BW400CN looked, again to my eye, to be pretty good: better than my colour neg conversions and not much worse than scans from Ilford Delta 400 (which is my favourite, so far, from various experiments).

100% crops from both are shown below:

#1 Ilford XP2


#2 Kodak BW400CN


Thoughts? Could it be that the operator just didn't adjust properley for the Ilford film? Could it be that (as someone suggested in this thread) I should have exposed the XP2 at somewhat less than ISO400? Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

I will have to try my own scans of the negatives, to see if it was perhaps the scan process that sent things astray (if this is, indeed, "astray" and not an expected result).

Sized for the web versions of the photos I took that day are in a flickr set, if anyone's interested (not that they show anything much about film type after resizing).

...Mike

 

[vrgard]

interesting results, Mike. They track mine exactly. Your images show the higher grain and high contrast I experienced with the XP2 and the better tonal gradations I experienced with BW400CN. Perhaps it is a sort of mismatch or wrong parameter setting on the particular 1 hour photolab scanning equipment. I have not yet taken the time to scan my XP2 negatives so I look forward to seeing your results if you get to it before I do.

-Randy

 

[biomed]

Nice shots, Rich. I like the escalator the best. I really like this film and usually get good results. I typically shoot it at 320 just to give it a bit of extra exposure. Here are a couple I shot with a Bessa L and CV 15/4.5.

 

[Rich Silfver]

Really nice shots Biomed